The Dinner Party
services
Book design
credits
Photography by
Anaïs Lesy
The Dinner Party, by Mathias Colpaert, is a cookbook built to make entertaining easy, whatever the occasion. Whether it's a carefully planned dinner with friends, unexpected guests showing up hungry, or a picnic with picky eaters, it guides home cooks toward a full table with six menus and sixty recipes, each serving ten or more. For publisher Lannoo, we designed the visual identity, cover, and layout for this book, creating something that feels like a secret weapon in the kitchen: practical, confident, and full of personality.
the mission
Our goal was to translate that same confidence into a visual identity: bold but never chaotic, appealing to home cooks who want to entertain without the stress. We aimed for a design that feels as generous and inviting as the food itself, allowing each of the six distinct menus—from a taco night to a Middle Eastern-inspired brunch—to have its own character within one cohesive book.
the results
The book opens with bold, oversized typography on full-bleed red pages—acting as punchy chapter openers before settling into calm, cream-coloured recipe pages. These feature warm food photography and loose, hand-drawn illustrations of onions, herbs, and hands at work, with a recurring green accent marking tips and swaps throughout. That same sketchy, imperfect style—a branch of fruit, a hand seasoning a dish, a spilled glass of wine—runs through the entire book as a reminder that cooking doesn't have to be flawless to be enjoyed. It's a design that alternates rhythm and rest: bold red statements giving way to calm, practical pages, mirroring the natural build-up and release of a good dinner party itself.
